Sure, he’s all about his finale outfits now, but John Galliano’s magic for Dior started a long time ago with the crafting of those extravagant gowns and the orchestration of those epic productions. Let’s review: an haute-couture Pocahontas arriving on a moving train (a real one), Japanese acrobats tumbling down the runway alongside models, paper butterflies filling the Opera Garnier—it’s mind-bending both in scope and ambition. Photographer Roxanne Lowit’s hefty new tome, Backstage Dior (teNeues, $125), captures all the backstage frenzy and fuss leading up to those indelible spectacles of the last decade. We’d say the book, with a foreword by Suzy Menkes and essays by Simon Doonan and Valerie Steele, makes a great stocking stuffer, but you’d need a magnum stocking.